Hello Sir,
Long time reader going back many years, and for last four years I have written reviews for 411mania.com. I also run a pro-wrestling board where friends can come and discuss. One person posted the following today, and I was just curious on your thoughts. Do you agree with the guys idea that WCCW would still be alive today? Here is his post:
"Today is the 28th anniversary of the Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich match held at Texas Stadium where Kerry won the NWA title. That would have to rank as one of the most famous matches in wrestling history.
Too bad Kerry didn't get a longer reign. At that point, even with David passing months earlier, Von Erich mania was its zenith. WCCW was the hottest promotion in the world at that point.
To this day, I believe if David lived, WCCW would still be going strong and it would be a totally different scene in Pro Wrestling.
But for a brief moment, all eyes were on Texas and WCCW!"
That's not really much of a convincing argument. Kerry Von Erich was a much bigger star than David was, even if David was a better worker, and they had Kerry all the way until the promotion got swallowed up by Jerry Lawler. First of all, playing the "if David lived" game isn't really fair, because David had a heart and/or intestinal condition (if we go by the official story and not the drug rumors) and something like that was going to get him eventually. Same kind of deal as Eddie Guerrero, where you can't do the "if he lived" thing because Eddie's heart was destroyed by drugs and if he lived through one heart attack another would just get him a month later.
Anyway, let's assume David is 100% healthy and lives to carry WCCW past 1984. Is that suddenly going to keep Vince McMahon from destroying all the territories single-handedly with talent raids and pricing the smaller guys out of the TV markets completely? Nope. Much like the heart attack that killed David, Vince was an ongoing condition of the wrestling world and World Class was not going to survive into the new world because I assure you Fritz Von Erich was not the guy to compete with him. Even when David was alive Fritz was already showing signs of the same mistakes that would kill the promotion years later, so there was just too much working against the promotion. You can't just run with the Von Erichs on top forever. Eventually David would have moved on, just like Kerry, and it's the same story, game over for WCCW. Hey, David was great, no doubt, but let's not get carried away.
David and Kerry were basically interchangeable, with regards to the World Championship picture. When David died, Kerry basically got the reign David would've had. I really feel like David wouldn't have received too much of a look outside of a single title reign.
ReplyDeleteI just don't see how World Class could have continued to compete with the WWF and WCW well into the 90s. They tried expansion, if I remember correctly, and it didn't work. I don't think they could have kept running shows out of the Sportatorium and kept a large enough audience to keep the company afloat. Yes, TNA does basically the same thing, but to my knowledge, Fritz didn't have a corporate sugar daddy willing to go deeper into debt every year. At best, WCCW would have settled into something on the level of ECW and ROH.
ReplyDeleteWell, Jim Cornette still insists that, had Jim Crockett not tried to expand nationwide and kept World Championship Wrestling based mainly in the Carolinas region, they would have "blown the WWF out of the water with dynamite" there. Not sure how much of that is wishful thinking, as the best talent would have left for the bigger paydays of the WWF sooner or later...
ReplyDeleteAnother thing you have to think about. I totally believe David died of an overdose. All the brothers did drugs.
ReplyDeleteBrody was flushing drugs down the toilet allegedly. Whatever.
My point... If 4 of your brothers are treated as rock star wrestlers and given carte blanche to do anything you want, drugs included, more often than not you gonna fall in line. "Be a bro" literally.
That being said Kerry, Mike and Kevin were addicts. David was the oldest Im thinking so yep being big bro (after jack Jr) means he is setting the example.
People sit here and say David Von Erich would of made a great champion, outside of Texas and his heel stint in Florida... maybe Mid South, He(they) were nobodies. by 1986 WCCW was DOA. The reason Flair made for a great champ is cuz he went everywhere. He talked the talk and walked it but he relentlessly toured the territories whereas Fritz would of kept David on a short leash to keep texas strong and go no farther than St Louis cuz it was NWA HQ.
One thing being in the military is travel and everywhere i go i find wrestling fans mark and smark alike. I always ask who do people remember. When I lived in TExas it was the Von Erichs, goto Memphis, its Lawler. Goto Florida its Dusty. But when I ask people from Minnesota about wrestlers from Texas... blank... I ask Floridians about Oregon... blank... and in my travels the Von Erichs were not as over nationally as they thought they were.
Yes, they got the territory hot at one point, but their reach only reached so far. Vince would of outspent Fritz and if they were clean enough he would of raided the good ones, but it goes to show when Vince went national he didnt really snag too many people from WCCW, if any. It was AWA (RAPE), Memphis (outlaws) and Mid Atlantic/Florida. He didnt touch Barnetts people in Georgia. He didnt touch Giegels people in St Louis. But I attribute the WCCW folks being too fucking stoned to even try and snag em. He had enough druggies.
I just read a good article about a bunch of this stuff:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hack-man.com/Wrestling/NewsArticles/20001019-VonErich.html
OMG! Otto "Hack-Man" Heuer!
ReplyDeleteTo me, what's really fascinating about that article is that Muchnick exposes every other dirty secret of the Von Erichs at the time, but STILL buys the "fused ankle" story! That prosthetic foot was given better protection than the President and John Cena COMBINED.
ReplyDeleteThat's one thing that threw me too but this was written not long after everything occured so probably that story is more believable than somebody with no real foot wrestling whereas drug abuse would have been a pretty easy thing to believe as a cause of death for a wrestler in that area at that time.
ReplyDeleteIf the rumors are true, one thing that couldn't protect that prosthetic foot was a cheeseburger, and the length of a room.
ReplyDelete